


this is my precious life

by peradi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, M/M, Women Being Awesome, jessika pava is a badass, minor character given backstory, the force is a terrible gift, we are who we choose to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:19:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10991748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: Here's a miracle in three words: Jessika Pava lives.





	this is my precious life

**Author's Note:**

> according to wikipedia dandoran was used to test a zombie virus by the empire, creating 'death troopers' which were defeated before they could spread across the galaxy
> 
> follow me @peradii on tumblr

_ Say ‘This is my life _

_ This is my precious life _

_ This is how badly I want to live’ _

[\- an insiders guide on how to be sick](http://ohandreagibson.tumblr.com/aninsidersguideonhowtobesick)

 

 

 

Remember.

 

Once there was a girl small and bloody and she came into the world with a heart that could not beat and skin thin as paper and veins showing stark blue in her wrists. Lungs drowning in fluid, her small mouth opening, closing, a landed fish: hopeless and helpless and useless. How can something so small live. How can something so miserable live. I’ll tell you how: she comes into the world born with a heart that could not beat, and at once she is swooped from her mother’s womb -- her mother’s thighs red-painted with blood, forming two curtains opening, the galaxy’s worst  _ ta-da _ your baby girl is born two months early -- and wired up to a droid to drain her lungs, a droid that says  _ you do not have a heart so I will beat for you.  _

 

On the southern half of their planet, not so many years ago, a clutch of monsters breathed their last and then breathed again, clawing out from the cold soil, green-skinned and starving, broken-toothed carnivores that lusted for the flesh of their brothers, sisters, children. The monsters did not spread -- but all that poison got into the water, and the water formed clouds, and down came the rain, poison rain, and into the waters came death, and death spread like a weed, roots plunging deep and wide. Children are born with no heart. With no face. With skin translucent, sloughing off in the birth canal. Mothers scream and wail when they see their sons, daughters.  _ They poisoned our world, they are killing our children, the Empire fell and still our children are born with no eyes and no limbs, our children are born with their organs outside their bodies -- _

 

But humans are humans, and they stayed in the poison-world, the world with waters of death, and they flew in technology from every corner of the galaxy, and they learned to take these half-broken children and make them whole. Make them live. Remember: humans are grubby survivalists that take mortality as a challenge. Remember: the girl was born small and bloody, like so many children before her, and her mother, Lysander, and her father, Samya, wept; but she lived, because humans live; because humans fight to live. Always. Always. Always. 

 

 

\--

 

 

Dandoran is a world veiled in death. Memorials in each city commemorate the thousands and thousands of children lost. There are entire continents cordoned off, because the soil is rancid, animals scavenge meat from the dead and grow sharp teeth, lesions that gape open to the sky, showing glistening tangles of intestine.

 

The New Republic remembers: the Empire was a horror. 

 

Dandoran  _ lives  _ this horror, with each and every day. 

 

Jessika Pava, at thirteen months, needs a new lung. At two years, very abruptly -- for no reason anyone can discern -- her left leg stops working, snagging and dancing, and she cannot walk; so she crawls, hands and knees, her foot jerking from left to right, because her spine’s electrical signals are mixed up and strange, because she lives in a planet where poison falls from the sky. 

 

But she crawls. She wants to get from A to B, so she does, no matter how hard it is for her. She’s stubborn, even then, even as her body falters around her. 

 

When she’s six, she’s in the hospital for a broken arm. The consultant -- whom Jessika calls Auntie Mayflower, because she’s as much a constant as any family member -- bends over, clucks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Second time this month,” she says. “What happened?”

 

“She jumped out a tree,” says Samya. Shadows hang under his eyes, but he’s smiling, proud. 

 

“Was playing Luke Skywalker,” says Jessika, pouting, “an’ I was crashing, right, and I had to get out of my ship -- “

 

“Is Luke Skywalker your favourite?”

 

“He’s the best star pilot in the galaxy! I want to be just like him!”

 

“When you grow up, you can be whatever you want -- “

 

“Don’t be silly Auntie Mayflower! I might not grow up! I’ve got to be him now.” She grins, wide and wild and reckless and up until that very moment Dr Mayflower was under the impression that her regular patient was just like any other child, heedless of her own mortality, blind to the shadow of death, happy to risk herself -- leaping out of trees, running away from home to climb mountains -- because she didn’t understand the consequences. 

 

But now she understands: Jessika Pava knows death. She was born to a world where it rains from the sky and festers in the southern hemisphere. Her school-friends have all lost siblings to birth defects that could not be cured, even with Dandoran’s now-legendary medical technology. Jessika Pava is accustomed to mortality and greets it like an old friend. She knows death. She doesn’t fear it. 

 

\--

 

 

Jessika Pava lives. 

 

That’s a story in itself, a miracle in three words.

 

 

\--

 

 

“This one isn’t doing very well,” Poe says, gesturing to the scoreboard. Right at the bottom, with a mission success rate of 15%, is one of the newer recruits: Jessika Pava, from Dandoran. He’s seen her around: a slight, skinny girl with black hair and dark shadows under her eyes. She came straight from the Academy, with no practical experience in combat. But they took her in, because the Resistance needs all the help it can get. “All the others are averaging 70 on the sims, if not more. Have we considered taking her off piloting?”

 

Ipso smirks. “You go off on a mission and come back with no fucking idea, don’t you Dameron?”

 

Dameron’s brows pull together. The universal agreement in the Resistance is this: Confused Poe™ is third on the list of Most Attractive Poes, coming second only to Heroic And Inspirational Poe™ (as seen on a recruitment holo near you)  and Drunk Hip Grinding Poe ™ (released only after the third Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster).  “What do you mean?”

 

Ispo rolls her eyes and whistles. “Pava!”

 

From the other end of the hangar -- the hangar which is held together by spit, prayer and D’Qar vines, because no decent architects have defected yet -- a skinny girl in pilot orange detaches from a group of her peers and jogs over. 

 

“Yes Ma’am!” she says, military sharp bearing, bright-eyed and eager. On such backs are rebellions built, Poe thinks, and Force grant that those shoulders can bear the weight. “Captain Dameron!” 

 

“Captain Dameron was wondering why your scores are quite so bad.”

 

“That’s not exactly --” 

 

“They are bad, sir! Terrible, sir! But I was on 2% last week, and I only arrived the week before that.”

 

“ _ You were on 2% -- “ _

 

“Yes sir!”

 

“Pava flies the hardest sims,” says Ipso, taking pity on her sputtering colleague; Poe’s eyes have got all mad and darting, every inch of him screaming  _ what is happening to us have things got so dire have they --  _

 

“Really? Have you tried the starter ones?”

 

“What’s the point? I’ve got to get to these eventually -- might as well start in the deep end!” 

 

She’s reckless and wild and her smile is wide and full of hope; her body tense and quivering, like a bow pulled taut. Poe glances at Ipso, who is grinning. 

 

He knows that he’s meant to be proud -- a daredevil! Like him! Except she isn’t. Except he isn’t. He’s thirty three, and he’s seen more of the galaxy than he cares to admit. 

 

“Nope, that’s not how this gig works. You’ve got to start at the beginning. That’s how you learn -- “

 

“But!”

 

“No  _ buts _ . If you dive ahead and start learning how to fix an engine mid-air without learning first how to fix it on the ground then you’re going to make stupid, sloppy mistakes. You’ll get yourself killed. I’ve seen too many Force-may-care pilots die because they think that plunging in head first is the best way to learn.”

 

Pava’s face crumples. “But -- but we could be dead tomorrow, we could all be dead tomorrow, isn’t it better to learn faster?”

 

“No. Stop watching so many films about Luke Skywalker. Stop thinking you’re a holo-hero. Do the boring stuff first.”

 

“How did you know -- “

 

“I’ve seen a lot of kids your age,” says Poe, resting a hand on her shoulder. He’s, at most, ten years her senior; but in that moment he feels ancient as the stars, as worn as the teeth of the Force, because she is so fresh and new, dewy with promise, unscarred and untested and so terribly innocent. “And guess what happens?”

 

“They die,” says Pava, flatly. 

 

“Yeah. Yeah they do.”

 

“Everyone dies.  _ Everyone dies _ !”

 

“Of course. But I’d like you to hang around long enough to do something useful.”

 

The girl blinks. “I -- I guess I just want to be as useful as possible --”

 

“You will be. Learn properly. Learn  _ well _ .”

 

 

\--

 

 

Jessika Pava knows death, but this is not death: it is, somehow, worse. It is the potential of death. It is uncertainty. It is a hammer, waiting to fall. 

 

Finn is alive, and yet not alive. A machine breathes for him. His brain signals flare intermittently. His heart beats on. Slow. Slow. Slow. 

 

And there is Poe, head bowed. Jessika pads over. Machinery clicks, hisses around them; little noises that only serve to highlight the silence, in the same way that the riot of flowers stacked on his bedside table only serves to highlight the stark sterile whiteness of the walls. 

 

“Hey Dameron,” she says. 

 

“Hey Pava,” he replies. He looks up briefly. His eyes are red-rimmed; from crying, or exhaustion, or both. “How’s it going?”

 

Pava perches on the edge of the bed. For a long moment there is silence: the beat of her heart, strong and sure against her ribs. Her hands folded neatly in her lap. Every part of her, at one point or another, has known the caress of bacta, or the flicker of a scalpel. Her heart was grown in a vat. Her left lung has been taken out and drained and put back. Her fingers have been set again and again, because a child who does not fear death is a child who is injured over and over. 

 

“You know,” she says, “I was very, very ill when I was younger. I almost died. I come from Dandoran; we’ve got clouds full of poison, oceans full of mutant fish. There are hundreds -- thousands -- tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands -- of babies who were like me, who were born with the wrong number of limbs, or hearts that didn’t work or -- “ 

 

Her voice trails off. She taps her fingers on her thigh, huffs out a hard breath. 

 

“Anyway, after I was born my parents wouldn’t leave the hospital. They wouldn’t leave, because he couldn’t bear to leave, because I was there, blue-skinned and -- and  _ dying _ . I had -- I had pneumonia, I had a droid breathing for me, I went yellow with kidney failure -- and they didn’t leave. Couldn’t leave. They had jobs and lives outside of that room but they ignored them, because I was there, because I was ill, because they thought that the world stopped because they...because they thought it had to. But it didn’t. And they were making themselves ill; my Mum lost so much weight, my Dad started smoking again. And after a fortnight, my Aunt Mayflower -- well, not my aunt, not technically, not a  _ blood _ relative, but someone I’ve come to call my aunt -- a doctor. My doctor. She literally stormed into my room and told my parents to get the fuck out. She said: if you can’t care for yourself you’ll be in no state to care for your daughter.” 

 

“This is different -- “

 

“No. No it isn’t. You can’t just sit here. The Resistance needs you. We need you. Sitting here like a lump isn’t helping anyone, least of all Finn.”

 

When Finn wakes, Poe Dameron isn’t there. He’s in the canteen, because martyrs need to eat, because in order to care for the ones you love you need to care for yourself, because Pava will  _ beat  _ pragmatism into Poe Dameron the dreamer if she has to.

 

Because wasting away by your beloved’s bedside isn’t romantic -- but living for them, living when life is sharp-toothed and cruel, when all seems lost -- that is love. That is bravery.

 

 

\--

 

 

When she was younger, Jessika Pava was desperate for Force sensitivity. She’d play Jedi and Sith with her friends; she had a Luke Skywalker action figure (with a removable hand and actual functioning lightsabre!) and she would try (for hours and hours!) to move things with her mind.

 

Then she sees Rey face drawn thin and white in the half-light of dawn, her shoulders shaking, a smudge of blood under her nose. Pava’s an early riser. Old habit. Up to the age of thirteen she was woken by an alarm, a reminder to take her meds. 

 

She still takes the meds, doesn’t need the alarm anymore. 

 

“You okay?” 

 

“Yeah,” says Rey. Pava used to be pretty in awe of her until she saw her eat an entire birthday cake, cramming bright blue icing into her mouth with both hands, her eyes sparking with faintly orgasmic delight. 

 

( _ This is the best thing I have ever had in my mouth!  _ \-- and oh, hadn’t that made Finn blush and Poe snigger)

 

“Can’t bullshit a bullshitter,” says Pava. “You’re not. Tell me.”

 

“I -- I had a nightmare,” says Rey, abruptly, the words snapping out of her like wild birds taking flight. “I dreamed about Kylo Ren. Again. He had Finn. He was torturing him. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t move. I had to watch him die. Again. And again. And again.”

 

Pava dreams of a hospital she can never leave. She knows better than to say  _ it’s just a dream _ .

 

“I have a link with him. With Ren. I formed it by accident...I want to break it, I want so desperately to break it, but I can’t, and he’s in my head -- the things he thinks, the things he wants to do. He wants to kill Finn while I watch. And he’s in love with me. Which is worse, somehow, than hating me; though for him they’re pretty much the same thing, tangled up together.”

 

Rey sits down  in the wet grass, the night cloud thinning to reveal lilac stripes of dawn above her. Pava joins her. 

 

“I haven’t told Finn that.”

 

“About the bond?”

 

“No, he knows that. About Kylo Ren loving me. It makes me sick.”

 

“Of course it does. He’s a monster.”

 

“He doesn’t understand what love is. I don’t understand. He was raised by Leia and Han, he had a family, he had  _ everything _ . He was loved. And he turned into a monster, he -- he had Han for a father. I would have given  _ anything _ for what he had.”

 

“Sometimes,” says Jessika Pava, who was born half-drowned with a heart that didn’t work, on a planet where poison fell from the sky, on a planet where humanity endured, still, because humans endure  _ everywhere _ ; Jessika Pava, who was born small and frail and useless and learned to fly. “Sometimes, people transcend the circumstances of their birth. That can be a brilliant thing. It can be a terrible thing. We all make our choices.”

 

“Yes. We do.”

 

“Besides, I think you’re wrong.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I think Kylo Ren understands what love is. I think he pretends not to.”

 

Rey’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “Yes. You’re right. He understands what love is, and he tells himself that he doesn’t, because it is easier than the truth.” She stands in one effortless, elegant movement; Jessika tries -- and fails -- not to catch her breath in wonder.

 

_ Oh dear, _ she thinks, as she stands,  _ there’s something here, isn’t there. _

 

“I want to show you my garden,” Rey says. And that is where they go, to the flowerbeds behind the medbay, where blue vines tangle up a trellis erected by the Force and bright pink blossoms wink from their silvery stems. Rey knows the names of each, and tells Jessika what sort of soil they prefer, how much water they should have. She talks about them like they are sentients: the Meadowweed is a creeping little miscreant, while the Jtraa Rose is a proud lady who needs careful tending. 

 

Jessika Pava wants very much to kiss her, but -- well, she’s lying when she says she isn’t awed. She is. A little. Instead, she says, “Which flowers can I pick?”

 

Rey tells her. And Jessika picks them, and some vines, and braids a crown of pink and blue and yellow and places it atop Rey’s head. It’s a little too big and slops towards her nose; Rey crinkles her face up in a giggle, catches the crown, pushes it back up and holds it in place. Her eyes -- oh Force, her wonderful wonderful eyes -- flicker from Jessika’s mouth to her nose. And then, fast and neat as a rabbit, she darts forwards and kisses Jessika. Quick. Light. Rey jumps back straight away, and Jessika touches her mouth. 

 

“Uh,” she manages, “uh. Wow.”

 

“Sorry! Sorry if I -- if I misread -- I kind of -- I like you? -- you’re pretty, and -- and -- I’ve never done this before? -- “ and the Jedi girl, the wondrous thing of storm and fire, stumbles over her words, pink flaring over her cheeks. 

 

 

“I like you too,” says Jessika Pava, thinking that Rey was raised in red sands and bloodshed, and yet here she is, smiling and shy and kind -- just as, once upon a time, not so many years ago, a girl was born half-dead and drowning, a girl who learned to fly. “I like you a lot.”

 

Rey takes her hand. They stand there, not touching, not speaking, for a long time. 

 

 

\--

 

 

Jessika Pava knows death. She was born and snatched from its arms. Sometimes, in her more fanciful moments, she imagines Auntie Mayflower standing by her cradle, holding a grasping, greedy creature made of shadows and smoke and bone at bay with a pair of surgical scissors and a ream of bandage. 

 

Death is a scientist looking at a mutated virus and thinking  _ why not _ . Death is a man with red hair and cold eyes saying  _ this fierce machine _ . Death is poisoned rain falling from an iron grey sky. Death is the ground surging up to meet a falling ship. 

 

And, sometimes, death is a man who knows precisely what love is, but pretends he does not, because how else could he live with himself? Sometimes, death is a man who plugs his ears up with lies and covers his eyes with a blindfold of blood. 

 

Kylo Ren clutches her throat with the Force. Wavering, thickening nebulas dance over her vision. Jessika’s legs thrash. Her face starts to turn blue. Blood vessels burst in her eyes, miniature scarlet supernovas exploding out of the white. 

 

Remember: once there was a girl small and bloody and she came into the world with a heart that could not beat and skin thin as paper and veins showing stark blue in her wrists. Lungs drowning in fluid, her small mouth opening, closing, a landed fish. 

 

And now she gasps and sobs for breath and it will not come.

 

And now she is small and useless and how can something so little and frail live. How can something so tiny and human stand against the Force. The might of the ages. Everything dies, everything that ever was, and Jessika Pava has been cheating death since she was a baby, and now -- now the formless shadowed creature that Auntie Mayflower beat away has returned. 

 

Kylo Ren’s fist clenches.

 

“They won’t find you. They can’t find you,” he says. Helmetless, pale and drowned, white skin and oil black hair: if pollution was a person, it would look like this. 

 

Jessika Pava has spent her life cheating death. She closes her eyes and with the last of her faltering strength  _ screams -- _

 

_ I’M HERE I’M HERE I’M HERE  _

 

The nebula implode. Her world goes white, then black. And then there are arms around her, hoisting her to her feet, she’s coughing, choking, vomiting, her throat is one sickening thrash of pain -- but she’s alive, alive, alive. Her heart hammers: you are alive. And she laughs, laughs because that shadowy thing called death is retreating, because Dandoran is a planet of poison and she survived that, because she survived this, because she is the epitome of humanity: born to cheat death, and laughing in its face. 

 

Remember: Jessika Pava lives. That’s a miracle in three words.

 

 

\--

 

 

Afterwards, Pava rests her head on Rey’s lap and thanks every god that ever was that she isn’t Force sensitive, that she couldn’t hear Kylo Ren’s thoughts as he choked the life from her. A man who was born to love and kindness and turned from it. A boy who made his choice, as everyone must; just as 

 

(remember)

 

she herself had chosen to hold the hand of death and learn to fly; just as Rey, reared by red sand and cruel thirsty air, chose to treasure things that grow. 

 

Jessika closes her eyes and dreams of clean rain, and flowers opening brilliant petals to kinder skies. 


End file.
